MUD SEASON GREENHOUSE VISITS

by Joey Klein 

1. FOUR SPRINGS FARM, ROYALTON, VT. The road out to Jinny Cleland’s farm was soft and rutted, the wind held spits of snow, but the welcome was warm and the view (all the way to Killington) was inspiring. Four Springs Farm runs a CSA and is open for camping and on farm education visits , but this time of year Jinny’s focus is on her pansy crop.

Jinny’s greenhouse was bursting with well grown pansies and herbs, destined for several large wholesale accounts and for retail at the Norwich Farmers’ Market.

Jinny uses Vermont Compost Fort V Potting Mix exclusively as her potting media, and has been impressed with its lack of weeds. Weeds are frequently a problem in compost-based potting mixes, because there is a long period of aging between the high heat of the early process and when the compost is suitable for a potting mix. The piles need to be managed carefully during this period. The whole composting site needs to be managed with weed control in mind. Vermont Compost gets Jinny’s approval on this issue: “I hardly ever find a weed, they are just not a problem,” she said.

Jinny tested the Fort V mix with the UVM Soils Laboratory and decided to do some minor amending to increase the pH with lime and the available nitrogen with pelleted chicken litter.

The amounts she adds are slight, and I think they compensate for how early she starts up her greenhouses and the cold temperature of water she uses. Her pansies were just about to bloom and were moving into to a colder greenhouse to hold them back a while. She had chosen to use Kord brand peat pots, which she likes for their breathable nature. She has not needed to fertilize beyond what she added at the start, and her plants looked great.

Jinny’s tip to share is her use of overhead radiant propane fired heaters in her greenhouses. The thermostat that controls this heater sits right on the top of the soil; the 60 degrees are sensed in the top of the potting mix, not in the air. The air is heated less, and the soil heated more by this type of heaters. This increases plant growth relative to fuel consumption.

2. LUNA BLEU FARM, SOUTH ROYALTON, VT

The mud was even worse on the way out to Luna Bleu, reaching a peak of muddiness right in their farmyard. Tim was all smiles.

Working in the greenhouse really cheers him up at the end of March, and his greenhouse was full of the results of his efforts.

Tim Sanford’s early greenhouse was just about full the day I arrived. He runs the air temperature cool but makes up for it with 8 large rubberized heating mats that keep the heat loving tomatoes and peppers for greenhouse plant germinating quickly. He would have to start heating another house very soon, as he started to pot up his earliest blocks.

Tim grows mostly in blocks, but uses open 1020 trays for onions and leeks. He also had a large set of these trays growing several different Mesclun blends, which he planned to market a the Norwich Winter Indoor Farmers’ Market.

Tim has observed a difference between the Fort V he holds over the winter and the growth he gets from Fort V freshly delivered. He either has to blend the two for growing seedlings, or he just uses the left over material as a soil amendment in his tomato and pepper greenhouses. We are doing some testing to try to find out what is going on for him.

Luna Bleu Farm uses many yards of Vermont Compost Fort V every year, growing seedlings for their 7 acres of vegetable production.

They are more focused than ever on their CSA and direct retail customers, and have dropped wholesale accounts to keep up with this direct demand. Luna Bleu counts on Vermont Compost to get them off and running every spring.

3. RED WAGON PLANTS, SHELBURNE, VT.

Julie Rubaud used to be a vegetable grower as well as a greenhouse plant producer, but whe had let the vegetable growing go for some one else to do. Her focus on wholesale organic plant production has earned her loyalty from the 25 customers she services, delivering primarily into the booming Burlington, VT market. She has a solid reputation for quality plants and excellent service, and her focus on the greenhouse production has made it possible. She is opening a retail greenhouse this year, rather than have to chase away customers.

Julie is a long term Fort V user. Vermont Compost Company has been providing this product to her since her organic greenhouse production career began 10 years ago and she is not shy with her praise for the product. “I tell all my customers that this is the mix I use, and how I can rely on it to grow out seedlings, plugs and liners without the need for additional fertilization.

The key is to pot the plants up in a timely manner.”

Julie has a neat way of handling the bulk Fort V Potting Mix. She does not pre-wet the mix before filling the flats. She feels that too much loft is lost if the flats are filled with moistened mix. The inserts are placed in the 1020’s, mostly 804’s and 1801’s. The flats are lined up in two or three rows on the weed mat floor of the filling area. The dry mix is shoveled onto the flats, and then a push broom is used to strike off the flats. The flats are laid out on a bench and watered thoroughly 3 times over about an hour’s time. This wets the mix well, and it is ready.

Julie waters as little as possible. During the many cloudy days of March, she still turns on the fans and the heat together, every morning, to vent moisture. “It is best for the mix to be dry on the surface before watering. I do all the watering in all the greenhouses myself. That’s how important watering is.” Judging from the results, Julie has a excellent system in place at Red Wagon Plants. Vermont Compost Company is proud to be her potting mix supplier.

Karl and Joey’s Excellent Midwest Road Trip 

Vermont Compost Company took to the road this February to visit with growers in the snowy upper Midwest. 

Angelic Organics

After flying into Chicago and getting our minivan at the car rental, our first stop was Angelic Organics.  Their farm is just off the interstate on the Wisconsin / Illinois border, and they strongly embody the farm to city connection.  Their land is a beautiful piece of gently rolling deep soil, and their CSA production is concentrated into one large field.  Quite a contrast to what we are used to back home in Vermont.  Bob Bower, the farm manager, explained that Angelic has been busy in the promotion of the feature film about their founder, The Real Dirt on Farmer John..  The film chronicles the history of John Peterson and his family on this land, his struggle to find a way to make a living there, and the farm to city connection that stabilized the business and made possible their great outreach program.  The Angelic Organics CSA Learning Center is now as big an enterprise as the farm itself, and share the farmstead as its offices and classrooms.  It runs year around programs for student groups from the suburbs and inner city. 

Angelic Organics was Vermont Compost Company’s first midwestern customer.  Farmer John was in Vermont looking at soil blocking machines to speed up the seedling starting for the large scale of production for his 1200 share CSA, distributed in Chicago.  He found the machine he wanted, and learned that Vermont Compost’s Fort V All Purpose Potting Mix was the first choice of Vermont’s organic vegetable growers.  He bought a truckload, shared some bags with neighboring farmers, and our connection with the Midwest organic farming community began.  

Angelic Organics has built a set of wooden trays for handling the blocks as they come out of the machine1’ by 2’ boards hold 120 1 ½” and 66 2” blocks. Their entire 30 x 96 foot greenhouse is devoted to seedling production for their own transplanting, and they have purchased a Dutch made transplanter that is made specifically for blocks.  The tip that Bob wanted to share with block growers is to cut the blocks with a knife as the roots start to emerge, to keep the roots confined to one block only.   

It was great to see the 2 yard sling bags from Vermont compost thawing in the greenhouse in anticipation of the beginning of their season. 

Bob and his staff have made real advances in their own compost production since our last visit, but are still happy to have us provide the Fort Vee compost based potting mix on which  the start of their production depends.

The Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference

Hoards of organic farmers, about 3000, gathered in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for this conference, and it seems like half of them stopped by at Vermont Compost’s booth at the trade show.  Karl and Joey were talking and listening non-stop for 3 days. We met with many of our customers, some of whom we had never met in person, and introduced our products to many who had not yet tried them.  Our conversations emphasized the importance of the finely finished compost that makes up 40% of our blends, and how our products are sufficiently rich in nutrients that no additional fertilization is needed until the roots have filled all the mix in the cell or pot.   

We enjoyed meeting everyone who came by.  We sold 7 pallets of mix in lots large and small to farmers large and small.  Many people now look for us at the show to buy Vermont Compost Co. products in small lots, as we still do not have a regional wholesaler.  Our main distribution system is still groups of farmers buying a truckload together.  

The evenings at the Conference featured live, danceable music and a regional organic beer.  This Midwestern folk really know have a good time!

We were snowed in at the conference’s end, but were fortunate to hear an excellent lecture by biodynamic grower Gunther Hauk. 

Harmony Valley Farm

The next morning we followed Annika’s directions onto slushy and snowy back county roads, through some lovely valleys and over some steep hills in the country between the Mississippi River and the Kickapoo Valley where the Bad Axe River runs.  Richard DeWilde has been on this farm for 30 years, and now crops 70 acres of the deep topsoil.  Their first class vegetables are distributed by a 400 member CSA and by wholesale deliveries to the Twin Cities in Minnesota and to Madison, Wisconsin.  He also sells at the famous Madison farmers’ market at the Capital. 

Richard switched from his own potting mix to Vermont Compost’s Fort Light two seasons ago, and has been happy with results, both in the growth of his seedlings and the time savings that has enabled his crew to get the plantings done on time. 

Richard cuts open the 2 yard sling bags on the seams, runs our mix through a ½” screen, loads it into bins and moistens the mix.  He fills his ¾” cell rigid plastic trays by hand.   

There were many flats of onions and leeks up in the greenhouse on the day of our tour, and we helped Richard roll up the Remay that covered the flats as they germinated.  The row cover holds in warmth and moisture in the cloudy weather and speeds growth, but need to be removed when the sun comes out.   

Vermont Compost is proud to stand behind regional organic vegetable suppliers like Harmony Valley Farm.  Richard is typical of the intensity of commitment that these Midwest growers bring to their farming.  These guys want to really meet the demand in the surrounding urban areas with the highest quality organic produce, in quantity.  

Avalanche Organics 

Over more hills, and after a good lunch at the Viroqua Coop, we followed the Kickapoo valley and found Joel and Jai Kellum having a big snowball fight with their kids.  Joel gave us a great tour of the production facility at the farm, where the focus is on large scale salad mix production.  Vermont Compost’s Fort Light potting mix comes into their plans when it is time to start their other major crop, heirloom tomatoes.  These are all started in 2” cell trays, and three large plantings are set out every season.  Joel says their season is hot enough and long enough that it is easier to grow and transplant another set of plants in a different field than it is to spray copper to protect the tomato plants from diseases .  Using this approach, the best early fruits are what gets shipped, and the season is extended.  It takes a lot of potting mix to get those hungry tomato plants off to a good start. 

Avalanche Organics has evolved over the years, and now the farm is adding more land to extend their crop rotations and to provide housing for their help.  We are grateful to Joel and Jai for acting as a regional distribution point for Vermont Compost in his area, and for hosting us overnight on our travels.  It is good to see such enthusiasm and talent ready to roll out the organic produce for an eager market. 

Green Earth Institute 

We carefully followed Steve Tiwald’s directions into the depth of suburban Chicago, but we were a little worried there was really a farm at the end. We went through miles of malls and gated communities, all on some of the flattest, richest tillage  in the world.  We found our way along, and came to an open spot in the midst of all of this development, a large open block of land with fields and ponds, geese grazing on grain stubble and some classic farm buildings.  This is the Conservation Foundation, the holder of the land that the Green Earth Institute farms.  Steve was a healthcare administrator before taking on the lease of this piece of farmland.  He feels he is still in the healthcare business, only now he is helping people not to get sick in the first place.  250 member shares receive the farm’s high quality, super fresh organic produce. The land is in a trust that restricts its use to agriculture and conservation.  The mission of the Green Earth Institute includes a broad commitment to environmental education, so teaching children and their parents about farming and healing the earth is a big part of the work.   They host over 1000 of their neighbors at an annual event, the Green Earth Fair, which features many educational session, and a fund raising plant sale.   

Steve grows using soil blocks and then pots on into various sizes for his retail customers.  He has been very happy with the Fort Vee from Vermont Compost, which replaced a less consistently performing mix of his own blending.  We left many 6 quart bags of our products for Steve to sell at his fair to help with his fund raising.  Maybe they be able to offer a scholarship to their excellent day camps.   

Kilbourn Park Organic Greenhouse 

We were on our way the next morning to towards downtown, where Killbourn Park serves a changing neighborhood, now mostly Hispanic and Eastern European.  The greenhouse was built in 1929 to supply plant material to the parks department, but fell into disuse.  The park was a dangerous place for a while, a focus of gang activities.  In the last few years the park has been revived as a family-centered location, and the greenhouse has been a big part of that. 

Kristen Acre, the director of the Greenhouse, has developed lots of programs for the local kids, including community garden plots and greenhouse time.  Many volunteers participate in growing many plants for a big spring sale.  Most of the customers are users of community gardening plots.  So Vermont Compost’s Fort Vee is moving out into the urban gardens of Chicago.  Kirsten is very excited about using our product, and happy to get away from commercial soil-less mixes and unfortified organic mixes.  Vermont Compost potting mixes will give her more time to focus on the plants and the program development, with supplemental fertilization no longer a worry.  We left a big batch of 6 qt bags with her as well, to sell at their fund-raising plant sale.   
 

Growing Home, Inc. 

We met Della Moran when she stopped by at the Conference and invited us to visit her project on the South Side of Chicago.  We figured that we had better see all sides of the city, and promised to come find her.  Growing Home runs both inner city gardens and a farm out of town as a training program for the recently homeless.  They provide employment in an economically deprived part of the city, where there are few businesses and many abandoned houses.  We met with Della at the inner city gardens, which are a spark of hope in a landscape that speaks of discrimination and neglect of infrastructure.  The Growing Home program emphasizes ecological management and small business skills.  Angelic Organics has supported this program, including contributions of Vermont Compost Company’s Fort Vee potting mix.  We gave Della 25 20 qt bags of our Fort Light to use in their potted flowers, which they will grow in their new greenhouse complex on Woods Ave.  We like the idea that Vermont Compost root balls will become a regular part of the community gardens of Chicago, and a proud to contribute to the fine work of Growing Home Inc. 

We returned from Chicago and the Midwest impressed with how the people we met out here tackle their problems head on, and have a strong commitment to organic food for the many, social justice and environmental preservation.  We were welcomed wherever we went, and had many valuable dialogs concerning food security, regional agriculture, composting and greenhouse growing.  We met a lot of great growers and hope that Vermont Compost products will continue to be a tool they use to achieve their goals.

Apple grower pg 33-35

COVER CROPPING

Orchard ground should be cover-cropped prior to planting. Ideally, two or even three growing seasons are invested in building up the soil with the understanding that tillage access will never be as good once the trees get planted. Sod is turned the Wrst spring and planted to the Wrst of two buckwheat smother crops. Lime and rock phosphate are best incorporated at the start (if needed) to sweeten the microbial decomposition process. Interplant winter rye with hairy vetch in September to combine the nitrogen Wxation of a legume and the organic bulk of the rye root mass. Red clover interplanted with oats oVers a similar two-bit gain. Green manure options can include bulky Sudan grass, deep-rooted alfalfa, and Hardin soybeans. Choose what works best in your region to most ben-eWt your particular soil type. Most clovers and -alfalfa require a full year’s growth to get the maximum beneWt of added nitrogen.

A basic turf of -orchard grass and Dutch white clover can be established during the year of tree planting if no further row cropping is envisioned.

The cultivated orchards of our great-grandparents were put into a cover crop late in the summer to protect the soil over the winter and renew organic matter. The spring harrowing was essentially a “composting in place” that allowed for aerobic decomposition in the top several inches of disced earth. The fruit trees had no immediate competition during the peak of the growing season for soil nutrients or moisture. Additional cultivations after petal fall kept weeds from taking hold. The planting of a summer cover would be delayed in a dry year to reserve soil moisture for the sizing fruit. But not for too long. The growth of the cover crop helped check tree growth and thus hasten winter hardening.

I like the ideal of maximum soil preparation as much as anyone.

These immediate edges can be worked for a year or two while the trees are small. Annual -nitrogen-Wxers like Weld peas or soybeans lead into a later sowing of oats. Some tree feeder roots may initially get harrowed in the cover crop zone, but the gain in organic matter may justify the eVort. The in-row strip between trees grows to winter rye and self-seeded buckwheat, but wildXowers and other grasses eventually gain the stronger foothold. Any quackgrass that survives year one can be a nuisance around the gravel mulch base that surrounds the young trees, mandating hand-hoeing and/or Xame weeding. Gravity-fed irrigation lines ensure our young trees get enough moisture despite the surrounding growth.

Green manure crops should be incorporated into the soil while still green and succulent. Clovers can Wx up to 150 to 200 pounds of nitrogen per acre when properly managed. Grasses are better at increasing soil organic matter, primarily due to their high lignin content and Wbrous root systems.

Pathogenic fungi can be suppressed by disking in a green manure: the high nitrogen content results in rapid decomposition, which in turn stimulates germination of dormant spores of the pathogen. Since the trees are not yet planted, the germinated spores, having no food source, get attacked by other microbes. Annual legumes grown alongside the tree row should not be directly disked in green in late summer, as the release of nitrogen may delay hardening oV. Mow the legume crop to lie in place, wait a few days, then sow a grass-type cover into the dried green mulch. A biennial legume interspersed with a scattering of oats could be mowed but then left to grow through the fall for shallow incorporation the following spring. The nitrogen boost would come when needed, the winter-killed oats would improve tilth, and the now open ground could be left rough until the summer planting of the next protective cover.

Four Season Harvest, Eliot Coleman

Pgs 14-15

The Organic Garden

Let’s take a moment to discuss the benefits of organic gardening. No fearful tales are involved.I have no moral sermon. I have no plan to drown you in pages of factual data. Our home garden is organic, as it has been for thirty years, for a very practical reason. Organic methods are simpler and work better. That’s right, they work better. Chemical agriculture is one of the great myths of the 20th century. The chemical salespeople swear that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are indispensable. In our experience, they are totally superfluous. They are necessary only as a crutch for the weaknesses of industrial food production.

Basically, organic gardening means a partnership with nature.

Nature’s gardeners are numerous and eager to help. Millions of beneficial organisms (everything from bacteria to earthworms to ground beetles) thrive in a fertile soil, and they make things go right if the gardener encourages them. The gardener does that by understanding the natural processes of the soil and aiding them with compost. The inherent stability and resilience of natural systems can be on your side if you work with them. Organic gardening is a great adventure, an expedition into a deeper and more satisfying understanding of vegetable production. You are now a participant rather than a spectator. You share creation.

A delightful bonus of organic soil care is the quality of the vegetables.

We are convinced that future investigations will confirm the value of food quality, just as present research has already confirmed the essential place of vegetables in the diet.

Since the key to vegetable quality is the quality of the soil in which the vegetables are grown, you want to have good raw material for the roots of your plants to forage in. Soil quality is influenced by the practices of the gardener. For a soil to be truly alive and productive, it must contain plenty of organic matter, plus the full spectrum of minerals. The soil can then feed the vegetables. A vital, alive soil will produce vital, alive vegetables.

Growing Green: Animal Free Organic Techniques

By Jenny Hall & Iain Tolhurst

2.2 Soil structure and physical components

An optimum soil structure has been described as:

a water-stable, organically enriched, granular structure where all the water reserves

within aggregates can be fully exploited by root hairs and the space between aggregates

is large enough to allow rapid drainage, to admit air and to facilitate the deep

penetration of roots.

The mineral components of soil are derived from rocks, which are weathered

into all sorts of sizes from the largest boulders through to stones, sand, silt

and the tiniest particles of clay. Soils vary widely in their relative contents of

sand, silt and clay, but a good proportion is around 20% clay, 50% sand and

30% silt. Such mixtures are known as loams.

All soils need careful management, especially the timing of cultivations, which

should be carried out when the soil moisture content is just right – not too

wet and not too dry.

Sandy soil – is the easiest to work, warming quickly in spring and draining

easily. However, it tends to be slightly acidic and can dry out easily in the

summer. It has large pore spaces and, if the soil is not carefully managed, rapid

water movement through the sand will leach nutrients, leading to fertility

deficiencies. Also, the larger air spaces mean that organic matter is more likely to

be oxidised and lost. Sandy soils need organic matter to bind particles together.

Silty soil – is a fragile soil that can cap at the surface.The pores are small and

can remain completely waterlogged in wet conditions or can become dusty in

dry conditions.

Even if some form of structure with large air pores can be

achieved, it can disintegrate easily with a packing down effect leading to

compaction where the soil becomes airless. Silts benefit from the addition of

organic matter to open up pore spaces.

Clay soil – is late to warm in spring, heavy to work and has poor drainage. It

is sticky when wet and tends to bake hard in summer. As the soil is wetted

and dried the clay particles can expand and shrink, causing cracking. Clays

benefit from the addition of organic matter, which opens up the air pores and

makes the soil less dense.

The characteristic behaviour of clay particles is very different from that of sand

or silt.The latter are chemically inert and only affect water retention and

drainage. In contrast, clay particles, the smallest particles of rock, are

electrically charged and can attract, hold and make nutrients available to plants.

Peaty soil – is organic, as opposed to mineral, in origin.

An example of its

formation is when, millennia ago, seas flooded established forests and in recent

times such land has been reclaimed from the sea. Such soil can look and feel

just like compost or peat.These soils tend to be too acidic for earthworms.

They can also be boggy in places and need careful attention to drainage.

Organic matter – The average content of organic matter in arable land is

around 2%. A lower organic matter content will give rise to greater structural

stability and hence greater susceptibility to erosion. High organic matter levels

e.g. over 10% in non-peaty soils will generally indicate low levels of biological

activity.This may be due to acidic pH levels and / or poor drainage.

2.3 Recommended practice – adding plant-based compost to soil

Topsoil is a mixture of disintegrating mineral rock and organic matter.

Organic matter is material of once living origin: plant debris, manures and

dead bodies of all animals and microscopic creatures. Organic matter is

continually decaying, feeding the soil biota (billions of soil bacteria, fungi,

microscopic soil animals and larger animals like worms). Replenishing organic

matter lost through oxidation (accelerated by tillage) will improve soil

structure. Organic matter retains moisture, binds sands and opens up clay

soils, making all soils more easily worked. Earthworms are the most

significant species for soil structure, as their burrows provide air and drainage

channels. Earthworms require plenty of organic matter and do not like acidic

conditions, poor drainage or frequent tillage.

If you follow the guidelines for making good compost in chapter 4, then you

should be left with friable dark compost that crumbles in your hands and

smells pleasantly earthy.

The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Underground Food Movements

By Sandor Katz

Pgs 79-81

Without access to land, people cannot possibly create or otherwise obtain food. Security and survival depend upon access to physical, outdoor space: farmland, grazing meadows, foraging and hunting ranges, and shorelines for fishing. Unfortunately, getting such access is very often a struggle in itself. The histories of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, colonialism, and many other forms of oppression are long sagas in which people have been systematically torn from the specific ecological niches that previously sustained them, the unique places that are the basis of culture and its glorious diversity.

The earth is our mother. We all come from the mother, and to her we shall return. We are of the earth; it is absurd to imagine that we can “own” it, even in small pieces. And yet the earth has been divvied up as private property.

Property is a legal concept, a cultural production, not an intrinsic quality of land. Notions of what can be privatized as “property” seem to be infinitely expansive: land is privatized; seeds and genes are privatized; and even water is privatized (see chapter 10).

My old friend Bill Dobbs used to say, “Real estate determines culture.” He was generally describing urban phenomena and offering a materialist analysis for cultural trends, but I think of his words often in relation to our food system. Real estate determines culture when indigenous peoples, carrying on age-old subsistence lifestyles connected to the land where they live, are supplanted by land ownership. Real estate determines culture when productive small farms are forced to sell their land because their modest agricultural earnings simply cannot keep pace with rising property-tax rates and competing demands for golf courses, malls, and subdivisions. Real estate determines culture when urban community gardens, which brought vitality and activity to their neighborhoods, are doomed by their successes and auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The social construct we revere as “the logic of the market” doesn’t do a very good job of taking care of the land or of meeting most peoples’ needs. When real estate is allowed to determine culture, that culture is an expression of domination. Culture needs to be liberated from real estate, and liberation movements everywhere have the reclamation of land as a central goal. “Revolution is based on land,” wrote MalcolmX in his 1963 “Message to the Grassroots” speech. “Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.”

The “commons” is an ancient tradition of land shared as a community resource, and what few commons remain are shrinking fast. In Britain the commons were privatized beginning in the mid-1600s, in four thousand individual “Acts of Enclosure,” culminating in the Great Enclosure Act of 1845.

The enclosures literally starved many people, peasant farmers who historically had depended on common land for their food. This harsh reality rapidly transformed the formerly landbound peasantry into cheap factory labor and facilitated the Industrial Revolution. The Diggers and the Levellers were two resistance movements that took down the enclosure fences as the landlords erected them. A Leveller tract of 1649 declared:

The Work we are going about is this, To dig up Georges-Hilland the waste Ground thereabouts, and to Sow Corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows. And the First Reason is this, That we may work in righteousness, and lay the Foundation of making the Earth a Common Treasury for All, both Rich and Poor, That every one that is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his Mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the Creation.2

This process of land privatization has been repeated around the world, as have movements of resistance to it.

“This continual struggle shows that the current inequitable distribution of land and housing, though widely accepted by elected governments and even public opinion worldwide, is strongly disputed on an operational level by people with the short end of the stick,” writes Anders Corr in NoTrespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes and Land Struggles Worldwide.

This chapter looks at movements struggling to retain and reclaimland for growing food. These activists include small-scale farmerssearching for strategies that will enable them to hold onto their land,urban community gardeners reclaiming abandoned lots in their neighborhoods,and liberation movements taking land redistribution intotheir own hands, such as Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST),settling hundreds of thousands of people on unused large agriculturalholdings. This chapter also looks at some activist movements defined bytheir separation from land, such as landless farm workers organizing forliving wages and safe working conditions.

The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth.

By Stephen Harrod Buhner

Pg 164-65

Plant Chemistry and the Soil

After a plant disperses its seeds, in the colder latitudes, the seasons begin to change. Trees and other perennials begin pulling chemistries out of their leaves, storing them in their trunks and roots for future use. About half of the leaf chemistry is retrieved; the leaves begin to change color in response.64 The annuals die altogether, having sent their life onward in their seeds. All these dying leaves and plants come to rest on and in the soil, creating a thick blanket of plant matter. Not all this plant “litter” is dieback, of course; a consistent portion is living leaves, limbs, lichens, and trees that for one reason or another fall to the ground.

“Living litter” is much more highly active in its chemistry than dieback. The trees and plants continue to hydraulically pump up water from deep in the Earth and release it through their stomata, forming clouds, and then it rains.

Rain percolates through the thick bed of plant matter that is restingon top of the soil and, like water through the coffee grounds in a coffee filter, leaches the chemistries from the plant matter into the soil. The lumpy shape of the Earth allows water to accumulate in standing pools filled with leaves and old plants and twigs and here the chemicals concentrate in strength—like a tea that has been left steeping. All of the plant litter releases its chemistries into the soil at varying rates depending on what kinds of plants it is from and what kinds of compounds are in it.

The soil then separates out and routes the thousands of carbon chemistries being deposited into it.Many of these substances, such as flavonoids, degraded lignin, terpenes, lignans, and tannins recombine to form humus—what we primarily think of as dirt (though dirt actually includes as well the billions of other organisms that live within it).

Humus is mostly two substances, humic acid and a combination of polysaccharides or sugar molecules. No one knows how humic acid forms, but once formed it acts like a living substance and possesses a number of unique characteristics. It forms crystals, much like snowflakes in a sense, and, like snowflakes, no identical ones have ever been found. Humic acid “uncouples” many plant compounds, separating them into their constituent chemistries, detoxifying them, and keeping the soil fertile.

)

Gaia’s Garden, A Guide to Home-scale Permaculture

By Toby Hemenway(pg4-5)

WHAT IS PERMACULTURE? I refer often in this book to permaculture and ecological design, two closely related fields upon which many of the ideas in this book are based. Since permaculture may be an unfamiliar word to some readers, I should do some explaining.

Permaculture is a set of techniques and principlesfor designing sustainable human settlements. The word, a contraction of both “permanent culture” and “permanent agriculture,” was coined by Bill Mollison, acharismatic and iconoclastic one-time forester, schoolteacher, trapper, and field naturalist, and one of his students, David Holmgren.

Mollison says the original idea for permaculture came to him in 1959 when he was observing marsupials browsing in the forests of Tasmania, and jotted in his diary, “I believe that we could build systems that would function as well as this one does.”

In the 1970s, he and Holmgren began to develop a set of techniques for holistic landscape designs that are modeled after nature yet include humans. Permaculture’s vision is of people participating in and benefiting from an abundant, nurturing natural world.

Though permaculture practitioners design with plants, animals, buildings, and organizations, they focusless on those objects themselves than on the careful design of relationships among them—interconnections—that will create a healthy, sustainable whole.

Interconnections are what turns a collection of unrelated parts into a functioning system, whether it’s a community, a family, or an ecosystem.

The aim of permaculture is to create ecologically sound, economically prosperous human communities. It is guided by a set of ethical principles—care for the earth, care for people, and sharing the surplus. From these stem a set of design guidelines. Some of these guidelines are based on our understanding of nature, such as, “Each element should perform several functions,” and, “Use natural plant succession to create favorable sites and soils.” Others are borrowed from stable, long-term societies, such as, “Use renewable resources,” and, “Begin the garden at your doorstep.”

Many of these design guidelines are given in various books about permaculture, listed in the bibliography. Together they combine to create away to design sustainable gardens, landscapes, towns, and cultures.

From this it is obvious that permaculture is about much more than gardening. But since permaculture emphasizes the role of plants and animals in human life, many people have come to permaculture through their love of gardening and agriculture. What I call ecological gardens draw much from permaculture.This book could easily have been called The Permaculture Garden, but that title has already been used by a British author, Graham Bell. Also, I wanted to use a term that was familiar to most people, and permaculture is not yet widely recognized in North America.

I hope this book will help remedy that. Most of the gardeners interviewed for this book consider themselves permaculturists, and many of the techniques described here were first assembled in Mollison’s books on permaculture.

Gardeners are people who love plants, and by extension, nature itself. For gardeners to be on the forefront of a better relationship between humans and nature seems only natural. It is my hope that the ideas in this book, based on permaculture and other methods of sustainable design, will encourage gardeners to reduce their own ecological impact ,and lead the way, through beautiful, lush landscapes, for others to do the same.

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a community

By H.C. Flores

Pgs24-27

Urban Ecology

Many people see ecological living as something they will do later, when they can finally afford a big place in the country, but I say, “Start now!” Even, or perhaps especially, if you live in a tiny apartment surrounded by a concrete jungle, you should always try to find simple ways to repair the earth, educate others, and prevent further destruction of the natural world.

Growing ecological gardens, wherever you can, is never a waste of time. Nothing lasts forever, and if you can get a few baskets of food without damaging the environment, and perhaps leave behind some long-living fruit trees, then the larger ecological community will surely benefit from your labors. If you can do these things while also educating others, then your work will succeed many times over.

In addition, not everyone wants to live in the country, and if everyone moves there it will all become the city. Many people plan to spend their lives in the city, happily, and have no plans to go rural.

This is good, because if we want to support the growing human population for more than another few centuries, we are going to have to grow up,not out. We also must ensure that urban communities can provide for their own needs, using resources from the local area. These needs include food, building materials, water, medicine, and much more, and currently there are no cities to provide a model.

We can, however, create our own models by simultaneously caring for the earth, caring for the people, and recycling resources. In these models rural food surpluses will supplement urban subsistence gardens, and the ecological integrity of each bioregion will depend upon how well the city dwellers can provide for themselves. Improving the ecological health of cities is crucial to achieving a healthy bioregional community, and if the ideas in this book inspire you, then begin doing these things now regardless of where you live or whether you rent or own your garden site. Do it for the land and to experience the personal transformation; consider the harvest a bonus, rather than the goal. The sooner and more fully we embrace an ecological ethic in our daily lives, the better our ability to place ourselves within the deep ecological context of our communities, and the clearer that context, the more accessible our vision of paradise.

Urban ecology is not so much a matter of “saving the earth” as it is a chance to improve the integrity of our own human lives and, thus, our chances of survival as a species on earth. The earth probably does not care whether we save her. She will most likely continue to turn and breed life long after humans have gone extinct. If we continue our current trend of wanton consumption and shameless waste, this may occur much sooner than later.

I know I sound like Chicken Little saying, “The sky is falling!” but if we don’t change our direction, we will get to where we’re going, which is currently extinct. This deep impermanence, while it may seem grim at first glance, is actually a blessing: Our own fragility gives us the impetus to act now to create healthy lives that harmonize with nature, and to know the comfort, joy, and inspiration brought on by an organic life. Why waste years and decades locked into jobs and consumer boxes that kill and oppress us when paradise is the alternative?

In my experience most people want to eat healthy food, care for the earth, and do otherthings that help create a better future for humans and other species, but they feel powerless against economic and social constraints.

This has a lotto do with the fact that millions of people don’t have a place to grow food, and the people who do have access to land, such as in rural and suburban areas, rarely steward it to the extent we need.

In addition to land, we also need tools, seeds, plants, and other materials, and most people can’t afford to just go out and buy it all. It is a common misconception that you need a lot of money to transform your home, garden, and community into paradise. But you can’t buy your way to a healthy ecology—you have to innovate it.

Integral to growing paradise gardens is recycling resources to do so. Every city in the world is rife with useful waste, and recycling it is an essential component of a healthy urban ecology. By understanding the flow of resources in the community around our gardens, we can better place those gardens within their deeper ecological and social context. Yes, growing organic food is always worth doing, but what of the truckloads of good organic produce that farmers and distributors throwaway? Using this waste for food and growing something else makes so much more sense.

Get acquainted with locally available, free resources—land, food, and otherwise. This is the first step in turning your yard into a garden and your neighborhood into a community, and recycling those resources is the next step. Focus on making best use of what is near you now, and buy new stuff only as the very last resort. The more we recycle the waste stream toward meeting our basic needs, the closer we come to closing the ecological loop.

Urban ecology is a big issue, and one that will take many years and many ideas to understand, but if we start with growing food where we can, we will be moving in the right direction. We can find space and resources that don’t cost money; we can build gardens and communities that make social and ecological sense.

This chapter will focus on making these resources more accessible. We will look at how to find a garden space if you don’t have one, and how to make the most out of the spaces you find. Then we will see how to tap into the flow of useful surplus that goes to waste every day, in every city in America, and how to divert that flow toward your garden and community.

Sanitary Disposal and Reclamation of Organic Wastes

We have made available a searchable PDF of the 1956 World Health Organization manual on Composting.

 This manual is one of the best resources on composting we have ever seen.

Click here to download.